The decline in the state’s ranking is no surprise since it’s perfectly consistent with Governor Hogan’s record on public schools. Consider what he has done in his first two years in office.

He cut public school funding in his first budget.

The Governor of Maryland has enormous budgetary powers under the state’s constitution. When he submits an operating budget to the General Assembly, the state legislators generally cannot add spending to it – they can only set aside spending for particular purposes or cut it. Over the years, the General Assembly has established funding formulas for certain spending items in state law, and that includes most state aid programs for K-12 education. But the Governor identified one program that was not protected by state law – a program that sent extra money to school systems with higher costs of educating students. The Governor cut half of that money, a total of $68 million, in his very first budget. Here are the counties that were affected and their dollar losses:

Prince George’s: $20 million

Montgomery: $18 million

Baltimore City: $12 million

Anne Arundel: $5 million

Frederick: $3 million

Baltimore County: $3 million

Howard: $3 million

Others: $4 million

Note that almost three-quarters of the cuts applied to three jurisdictions: Prince George’s, Montgomery and the City. What do they have in common? You guessed it: they all voted against Hogan by large margins.

Hogan resisted calls from the General Assembly to restore the cuts, so they passed a law making the program mandatory. Hogan waved the white flag of surrender, admitting that he did not have the votes to sustain a veto. If he had gotten them, those cuts would have continued every single year.

He withheld teacher pension aid for counties in his second budget.

Since FY2013, counties have been responsible for paying part of the cost of teacher pension funding, with the remainder covered by the state. After passage of his second budget, Hogan withheld $19 million in state aid the General Assembly set aside to help counties pay for teacher pensions, a move that threatened their credit ratings. Here are the counties that were affected and their dollar losses:

Hogan’s behavior is straight out of the playbook of Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos: starve public schools and send the money to the private sector. Hogan even put his own twist on it by using public school money as a bargaining chip to get corporate welfare for defense behemoth Northrop Grumman. The Governor’s intentions are beyond doubt. Only one question remains.